Exciting news for Baseball Card Exchange! Earlier this week, almost exactly 23 years to the day of opening our doors to the original retail store, we signed a lease on a new location that will serve our warehouse and mail order needs, as well as provide us with an area to operate a retail storefront.

Back in 1990, Baseball Card Exchange opened for business in a small (400 square feet) retail location in Lansing, IL. After three years, we moved to a larger/better location on the main thoroughfare down the street. This retail location was 1400 square feet and served us well. It was a great time to have a card store in the Chicago area; Michael Jordan and the Bulls created a lot of new card collectors, and even converted some die-hard baseball card collectors over to the basketball card market. In July 2002, we made the tough decision to close the retail store and go strictly into internet sales. E-commerce was booming. We moved into a 4,000 square foot warehouse, launched our website, and continued to use other internet outlets to grow the business. We quickly outgrew that location in less than five years, and moved again to our current facility that is about 6,500 square feet. We are located within a self-storage facility, and due to our space needs, we are additionally renting seven storage units as well. Lately, we have just not been able to move around the warehouse. It seems like every time we sell something, we have to move three pallets to get to it. Oh well - it's time to move again.

We had been scouting new locations for quite a while. After searching for an all-in-one location (warehouse, office, and retail), we were resigned to the fact that we should just move to a bigger warehouse, then pursue a separate location for retail.Still, there was this one location we always had our eye on, in the neighboring town of Schererville, Indiana. Though leased, it was empty for close to a year, and we just could not seem to contact anyone about the location.Finally, we spotted the "For Lease" sign and we didn't waste any time seizing the opportunity! The sign went up on a Friday, we called the owners on Saturday, inspected the building on Tuesday, then signed a letter of intent on Thursday. Our new building (over 12,000 square feet) should fit our needs perfectly. The new landlord has been great to work with and is very cooperative in meeting our needs.

Now comes the difficult part - moving. We already have a plan in place, and should not miss a day of our normal operations. We hope to be fully operational in our new facilities by the beginning of December.While the grand opening date of the retail store has not been decided yet, we are aiming for MLB Opening Day, 2014.We believe the retail store will have very little impact on the day-to-day responsibilities of Steve, Mike, Rick, Pete, and Reed. We truly feel having a retail presence in NW Indiana will complement the current BBCE business model and make us a significantly stronger company. Trust us; this will not be the run-of-the-mill local card shop. Thanks for all the positive e-mails and voicemails. Steve